Taxpayer gets £4bn back over banks

The state-owned firm responsible for winding down the mortgage books of failed lenders Bradford & Bingley and Northern Rock increased its repayments to the Treasury by £1.2 billion in 2012.

UK Asset Resolution (Ukar) said it paid £4 billion to the taxpayer in 2012, up from £2.8 billion a year earlier.

The company, which has almost 615,000 customers, said the proportion of mortgages three or more months in arrears fell 23%, helped by low interest rates and "proactive arrears management".

Ukar was formed in October 2010 to manage the loan books of B&B and Northern Rock after the former building societies failed during the financial crisis.

Chairman Richard Pym said Ukar's debt to the Treasury has since fallen from £48.7 billion to £43.4 billion. "We still have a long way to go, but it remains our expectation and determination to repay that debt in full," he said.

Ukar set aside another £130 million in 2012 to compensate customers mis-sold payment protection insurance (PPI) by Northern Rock, taking its total bill for PPI to £368 million.

It also said a paperwork mistake, uncovered last year, will cost it about £271 million in repayments to customers.

It was forced to admit the error in December after documents and statements sent to customers of Northern Rock Asset Management, one of its predecessors, did not comply with the Consumer Credit Act.

The number of accounts three or more months in arrears fell to 25,581 in 2012 from 33,216 a year earlier, helping its bad debt charge fall from £390 million to £241 million. It repossessed 7,326 properties in 2012, down from 8,848 in 2011.

10 things we hate about our banks

More than 46,000 of 106,000 the complaints received by the FOS in the second half of last year related to payment protection insurance (PPI). And the organisation is expecting to receive a record 165,000 PPI complaints in 2012/2013.

The huge numbers are due to the PPI mis-selling scandal that should now be a thing of the past, but there is no doubt that the insurance, which can add thousands to the cost of a loan, is highly unpopular!

Complaints about mortgages jumped by 38% in the last six months of last year, the FOS figures show, compared to an increase of just 5% in investment-related complaints.

Common gripes about mortgages include the exit penalties imposed should you want to sell up or change you mortgage before a fixed or discounted deal comes to an end, and the high arrangement fees charged by many lenders.

While there is nothing in the data released by the FOS about the number of complaints relating to savings accounts, hard-pressed savers have been struggling with low interest rates for several years now.

You can get up to 3.10% with Santander's easy-access eSaver account, but many older accounts are paying 1.00% or less and even this market-leading offer includes a 12-month bonus of 2.60% - meaning that the rate will plummet to just 0.50% after the first year.

If you need to send money abroad, the likelihood is that your bank will impose transfer charges - and offer you a poor rate of exchange. Someone transferring a five-figure sum could easily lose out by £500 or more as a result.

The good news, however, is that you can often get a better deal by using a currency specialist such as Moneycorp.

Automated telephone banking systems, not to mention call centres in far-flung parts of the world, are one of our top gripes - especially as we often encounter them when we are already calling to report a problem.

In the words of one disgruntled customer: "What is it about telephone banking that turns me into Victor Meldrew? Well, maybe it's the fourteen security questions, maybe it's the range of products that they try to push or maybe it's because I'm forced to listen to jazz funk at full volume while my phone bill soars.

"Actually though, I think it's because the people I eventually speak to rarely seem able to solve the issue I'm calling about."

The days of a personal relationship with your bank manager are long gone - for the huge majority of us at least.

When ethical Triodos Bank investigated recently why around 9 million Britons would not recommend their banks to a friend or relative, it found that almost a third felt they were not treated as individuals. Another 40%, meanwhile, were simply disappointed with the customer service they received.

The Triodos Bank research also indicated that the bonus culture that ensured the bank's high-flying employees received large salaries, even when it was making a loss at the taxpayer's expense, was hugely unpopular with consumers.

About a quarter of those who would not recommend their current banks said this was the main reason why. And with RBS executives sharing a £785 million bonus pool despite the bank, which is 82% publicly owned, making a loss of £2 billion last year, it's not hard to see why.